---
date: 2018-09-05
authors: [ritchieng]
description: >
  Ritchie Ng named Singapore's IT Youth Leader of the Year 2019.
categories:
  - Awards
comments: true
---

# IT Youth Leader of the Year 2019 Award
I am very happy to be the [IT Youth Leader of the Year 2019](https://www.scs.org.sg/it-leader-awards/winners-by-year.php?year=2019) in Singapore for my industry and non-profit contribution in AI at **Deep Learning Wizard**, ensemblecap.ai, NUS,  and NVIDIA!

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I would like to thank the professor who changed my life, believed in me and nominated me for consideration, Professor Chua Tat-Seng from NExT Centre, NUS School of Computing. Big thanks to everyone who helped for this in NExT Centre particularly Choon Meng, Tek Min, Chua Yi Hao, and Eugene Tan.

Special thanks to an important friend and associate who stuck by with me all the way, Jie Fu from our endless days of programming (and scribbling equations) during your PhD years to now as a postdoc in MILA 🙂And Ilija Ilievski from those years till now too!

Big thanks to the people who believed in the future of AI and asset management and made this happen with the original team Damien Loh, Atsuo Ogaki, and Samuel Chen from ensemblecap.ai

Thanks to new found close friend Alfredo Canziani who motivated me on open-source education further and supporting each other 🙂 And thanks to Moustapha Cisse for setting up an amazing initiative in Africa with #AMMI to kickstart a future of AI by Africa and trusted your students with our teaching. And I'm on my starting journey to help as many students of your as possible by guiding them on learning like Merghaney Mohammed and Enoch Tetteh.

Thanks to Soumith Chintala for spearheading #PyTorch and it's now in production running critical functions in finance (like my firm) and tech.

Thanks to Marek Bardoński where our friendship started when you were in #NVIDIA and we've supported each other ever since in our learning journey.

Thanks to #NVIDIA for allowing me to lead deep learning workshops under DLI in NUS all these years.

Thanks to my mentors and everyone in #PhilipYeoInitiative like Abel Ang, Seok Lin Khoo, Kiren Kumar, Claire Cheong, Chong Siak Ching, and Kai Hoe Tan

Last thanks to everyone in #SingaporeComputerSociety like Jason Chen for being there when I was nervous and Howie Lau for spearheading tech from start till now. And to a senior big award winner I've a lot to learn and also from NUS: Jeffrey Tiong!

Thanks to forward-looking civil servants and minister like Minister S Iswaran for gracing the event and delivering a speech on digital readiness and skills empowerment for Singaporeans.

Thanks to my family for being by my side Carine Chng, Ng William, and Adabelle Ng for giving me the freedom and support to pursue whatever I wanted even from young.

![](https://res.cloudinary.com/ritchieng/image/upload/v1552267733/award_it_youth_2019_rwzanm.jpg)

To the future of AI!

Cheers,
<br />Ritchie